440 The Living Plant 



fact has a practical consequence of the first importance, since it 

 is thus made possible for a breeder so to breed the hybrids to- 

 gether as, on the one hand, to eliminate utterly out of the hybrid 

 race any given undesirable quality inherited from either of the 

 original parents, and, on the other, to combine and fix perma- 

 nently in the race any two given desirable qualities originally 

 occurring in separate parent races. Thus, it has been possible 

 to produce hybrid races of wheat in which the superior flour- 

 producing quality of one variety has been united with the superior 

 frost-resisting quality of another, the inferior frost-resisting 

 quality of the former, and the inferior flour-producing qualities 

 of the latter having been eliminated permanently out of the 

 hybrid race. Moreover, it is possible, theoretically at least, thus 

 to combine in one race any number of good qualities from any 

 number of different varieties of a species, though in practice, as 

 we shall see in a moment, the matter is attended with immense 

 practical difficulties. It is, however, in this possibility of com- 

 bining in one race the desirable qualities from different races 

 while eliminating the opposite qualities, that the highest utility 

 of hybridization in connection with the improvement of plants 

 consists. 



(5) He can pollinate a given stigma by pollen from a plant of 

 another, but allied, species. This also is called hybridization, in 

 both Botany and Horticulture. In the vast majority of such 

 pollinations no result follows, but in the few cases where seed is 

 formed, the derived specific hybrids, like the varietal hybrids 

 just considered, exhibit characters derived from both parents, as 

 also new characters not traceable to either. Like the first genera- 

 tion of varietal hybrids, also, they are often larger and more 

 vigorous than either parent; but on the other hand they are al- 

 most invariably defective in reproductive power, and can hardly 

 ever reproduce by seeds. A famous example of a species hybrid is 

 Lilium Parkmanni, a magnificent Lily even finer than either of its 

 superb parents, but it is rarely seen in gardens because it does not 



